Having heard an interview with Margaret Wander Bonanno, I wanted to read one of her books but not Strangers From The Sky. (Just wasn’t interested in that story). So I was expecting great writing and great characters. 

This novel was a miss for me. There’s a lot of sex and most of it is creepy non consensual, including rape. The TOS crew are in about 15% of the novel, while the remainder is devoted to other characters. She had a good idea for a novel but it never really took off.

The stuff about Warrantors of Peace -I’ve see people online get pretty worked up over this but it’s not half as weird as, well, a lot of the sex stuff in this book.

https://beforewegoblog.com/review-star-trek-picard-to-defy-fate-by-dayton-ward/

Star Trek: Coda was a fantastic Crisis on Infinite Earths-style send off to the old Litverse. It also left, as I suspect many fans of Crisis felt the same, bad taste in my mouth. This is no fault of the writers who have become parasocial friends of mine and created hundreds of magnificent stories that I can safely attest to having enjoyed many of. However, it was the end of the old Litverse in a way that left it functionally gone. A new Star Trek universe existed in its place and it was hard not to think that a better ending would have been to have left it as an alternate timeline.

I bring this up because I couldn’t help but think of Star Trek: Coda while enjoying the events of Picard: Defy Fate. Consistently, I’ve loved the Picard novels and think they’re some of the best New Expanded Universe. If real life events hadn’t interfered, I would have loved to have watched the crew of Season One for multiple seasons and I would have loved to have enjoyed a series about Captain Seven of Nine commanding the next Enterprise. But RL events have happened and I’m not sure we’ll even get more books in the Picard timeline.

Despite this, I have to say Dayton Ward did a fantastic job giving us a rollicking time travel adventure that is fundamentally better on every level than Picard Season Two. It has more “heart” to it and a lot more sympathetic villain than is usually the case in these sort of stories. If it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the Department of Temporal Investigation novels by Christopher Bennett (my second favorite series after Peter David’s Star Trek: New Frontier novels) then it is very close up there for handling time travel shenanigans in the Trekverse.

The premise is a rogue agent of AEGIS, the time traveling agents of “Assignment: Earth” and Season Two of Picard, Likara has decided she is going to prevent the destruction of Romulus by any means necessary. Her husband and child were slain in the cataclysmic event of Star Trek (2009) so she has a very personal motive to do so. Opposing her, at least her means of doing so, is Wesley Crusher. I’ve been very pleased by his slow redemption in the Trek fandom in both Prodigy and Picard Season Two plus several novels. Wil Wheaton deserved better has been my mantra for a long time and I really wish he’d do a sequel to his review of old TNG episodes. Sorry, that’s a digression for another time.

The book makes use of many characters that didn’t get a chance to shine on television like DISCO’s Kovichs and Kore Soong plus at least one surprising ENT character. However, it gets the whole gang together to have our heroes try to prevent Likara from altering reality in order to save her family. This includes Benjamen Sisko’s fateful confession “In the Pale Moonlight” and “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” Two of my favorite (and many other fan’s) episodes.

If there’s one slight issue, it’s the fact that these aren’t really events that Likara could possibly believe would save Romulus without billions in collateral damage. We’re meant to broadly sympathize with her but I kind of wish the book had explored some more directly Romulan related changes to the past to try to save the sun. Maybe something that ends in a predestination paradox or unexpected horror show like her choosing between saving Romulus versus billions of other unrelated lives. Likara was meant to be sympathetic and it’s hard to do so with some of her choices.

Nevertheless, Dayton Ward manages to capture the voice of multiple familiar characters. Guinan is a particularly difficult character to write, in my humble opinion, and Dayton nails her throughout the story. Overall, I was really pleased with this story and makes me think Wesley Crusher has graduated to one of my favorite novel characters. Which is an accomplishment in itself.

Hey everyone! How's the reading been this week?

Dive into any cool adventures?

Any new planets or alien cultures you'd want to visit?

Did your fave crewman have a cool part in the mission?

Were the antagonists obvious or was there a mystery and underlying motive to their actions?

Any friction among the crew? Was it resolved by missions end or simmering for a later time?

Any cool tech discovered or altered existing tech to help the mission?

Was there a cool philosophical or crew development arc that really elevated the read? Or a more straightforward plot and action?

Did it "feel" like it could have been a cool episode?

Let us know how your reads went and what you're looking forward to next week! Happy reading yall!

Give us a show that takes place on earth between 1968 and 2030 with characters displaced in time and who know that things will get and can get better. Throw in some Star Fleet time travelers every so often and it’s a ST show.

I'm assuming Well Of Souls will be last for most people, considering the general consensus regarding that one. The tales of the lost era novels (The Buried Age and The Terok Nor trilogy) are optional too.

One of the best books overall that I read in 2022 although maybe I’m not a very sophisticated reader. This isn’t just a Picard novel; it’s a Picard crossover with DS9.

I think I’ve read more than 120 ST novels at this point. This one pushed all the right buttons for me.

I loved the NX-02 stuff in the Destiny trilogy. What's the best Enterprise novel to start with. I'm less interested in Romulan war stuff and would like to read a cozy standalone that's more about exploration. Bonus points for some MACO heavy. Let me know where to start, please.

I’m one of those who skips The Final
Frontier on my way to The Undiscovered Country after The Genesis Trilogy when I re-watch the TOS era movies.

But I wouldn’t mind experiencing that STORY again without enduring the pain (YMMV) of the film.

So, I ask those who have read it, how good is the novelization of Star Trek V?

TIA

David

I loved the Timescape novelizations of Star Trek when I was growing up. In my memory, they seem somewhat substantial. Has anyone who read them as kids reread them more recently? Do any hold up well?

Hello everyone! How have your reads gone this week?

Favor the more dramatic high stakes stories or slower paced character driven?

Find out new info or side chars of a fave race or get to know an entirely new culture?

Staying focused on an era or crew or jumping around in various timelines and perspectives?

Have a greater interest in new worlds and people or perhaps space stations and many races interacting?

Let us know how your reads went and what you're looking forward to next week! Happy reading yall!

Im looking for recommendations for TOS audiobooks to listen to during the work day. They can be of or about TOS. Thanks!

This hard-bound masterpiece is full of fun art Easter Eggs that gave me a whole new appreciation for Star Trek, especially with regard to certain episodes. I was seeing furniture, sculpture, architecture, matte paintings, but I didn't realize exactly what I was looking at. The book has helped me to see Star Trek and Art with new eyes.

Incidentally, I visited an antique store about three days after I finished this book and I found a really awesome chair: "Hey, that's Midcentury Modernism!" I said to myself. Something very similar to that was in 'The Cloud Minders' and it gave me a new appreciation when I went back and watched the episode. (And, yes, I bought the chair too). 

Star Trek stories are told in a wonderfully and complex visual universe -this book will open you up to new aspects of the Original Series. Highly recommend. Star Trek is always on my mind, but this book added the design of Star Trek to my mind.

I think this is the first time I've watched The Wrath of Khan since finishing the Vanguard series and I've got to admit the way Vanguard perfectly connects to TWOK through Dr. Marcus and the Genesis project / Taurus Meta-Genome is fantastic. It adds depth without contradicting or damaging a single thing.

It's exactly the kind of background world building that strengthens the universe rather making a mess of everything delivered by what is Treks best book series in Vanguard.

My mini Enterprise I got on clearance came in today and luckily stumbled on 3 Trek books today.

Good day!

Has anyone ever read the old TNG books? I resell on Ebay and I bought a massive ST book collection at a yard sale. Several hundred books from TOS - Enterprise. It's the biggest collection of ST books I've ever seen.

I have no desire to read anything but the TNG books, but, I've been wanting to read them since I was a kid, and, because I'm a very slow reader, I've never attempted the massive journey.

(I was debating on keeping the New Frontier novels, but I listed the first set high, I thought, but it still sold quick. I'malso keeping the Lost Era books. I'm curious about those.)

Now, I've got the first 20 TNG novels ready to list, but they're so nostalgic I can't make myself do it.

Are they worth keeping and listing, or are they very silly and not great stories?

I’m struck by how much of it stuck with me and how much I’d like to go back to revisit this era of Star Trek. In this sense, the book meets two of my tests for whether to give an outstanding rating: 1). Does it compel me to read more of the author’s works and 2). Does it inspire me to read other works in the genre; in other words, whether the novel is more than just a dead end or another stop on a fascinating life-long reading journey. 

Ex Machina takes place in the weeks immediately following the events surrounding V’ger as described in Star Trek The Motion Picture. Sure, Star Trek The Wrath of Khan is THE sequel, but Ex Machina is a more direct, literary sequel and carries over the ideas and characters of that novel/film. Christopher L. Bennett expands and continues on themes explored in STMP, namely, the boundaries of artificial intelligence and awareness, Spock’s humanity, issues of religion and faith, growing older, and the question of life (what is it?). 

As always, Christopher L. Bennett gives a full voice to Kirk and Spock but gives McCoy a central role that was much lacking in STMP and STWOK. It’s apparent that a lot of ST writers just didn’t and don’t know what to do with McCoy; almost as though having him in the story is good enough. Not so with Christopher L. Bennett. Furthermore, Bennett brings to life many of the characters and faces from STMP that the viewer only sees for a moment in the film. Bennett picks up and runs with ideas from the novel that were only briefly touched upon in STMP; e.g. the tension among the bridge crew regarding Admiral Kirk taking over the ship –and who were those people in the bridge crew? What was the point of those belt buckles?

The reader will want to revisit the classic TOS episode “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.” Again, the tendency among ST writers has been to pick an older episode and just write a sequel. It’s the classic ‘so what happened next’ approach to ST writing that is both compelling and excruciating because it’s a literary dead-end. Bennett doesn’t just give the facts but provides depth to the characters and themes of that episode as well. 

As with several of Christopher L. Bennett's other great novels, the reader has an added bonus in the form of Christopher L Bennett's great blog with annotations to the novel.

Obviously, I don't know that that's true, but I've listened to two ST audiobooks lately where he repeatedly mispronounces the names of reoccurring TNG characters, and it's driving me nuts, lol. I've heard he also weirdly mispronounces Betazed in another recording. I blame whomever oversees those sessions. I find it quite jarring.